1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to apparatus that are targets of operation control, and to operation terminals that control the operations of such apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, image forming apparatuses such as copying machines, facsimile apparatus, or printers have been known as operation target apparatus. In image forming apparatuses, various technologies have been proposed for improvement of convenience to users and of ease of operation. One typical of such technologies is an operation panel that is formed with the display device and a touch panel formed in an integral manner, and has been realized in a large number of image forming apparatuses. When the user operates the operation parts of the touch panel or of the operation keys, and changes the settings of the density or the contrast etc. during image forming, images are formed on the recording medium according to the details of those settings and recording sheet is output.
Further, systems have been proposed in which the image forming apparatus can be operated remotely via a network. In concrete terms, there is one proposed system in which the operation keys are displayed on a work station, and by transmitting via a network to the image forming apparatus the commands corresponding to the operation keys operated using a mouse cursor, the operations of that image forming apparatus is controlled remotely (see, for example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 6-326797), and there is another system in which the information of the coordinates of the position in the computer display at which the mouse was clicked is transmitted to the copying machine, and the operation is carried by the copying machine judging the operation instructed in the computer from the received coordinates information (see, for example Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 5-121424).
In systems such as the above, it is also possible to reflect in the display section of the image forming apparatus the contents of the operation instructions made in the remote operation terminal that carries out remote operation of the image forming apparatus. In this case, although it becomes possible to teach the method of operating the image forming apparatus to the user from a remote location, when carrying out operations that are to be carried out from a remote terminal only by maintenance personnel or system managers, there are times when the contents of such operations are not to be disclosed to the general users. In addition, while remote operation is being done from a remote operation terminal, if the user of the image forming apparatus makes operation inputs from the operation section of the image forming apparatus without knowing that it is currently being operated remotely, there will be the problem that the operation instructs conflict with each other.